The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca

Moody Denver

Moody Denver Airport
I don't normally highlight a mobile photo here on my blog. I tend to use my VSCO Grid to show them. The reasons aren't necessarily because they aren't as good of photos taken with my dedicated camera, but because usually there's just less that can be done. Or more accurately, if using RAW photos allows me to push processing to 11, using JPEGs are more like a 5. And that's starting off with a clean photo to begin with. This photo wasn't clean, was shot through a dirty window at Denver International, and was noisy all over. The X, to it's credit, did automatically select to use it's version of HDR processing, which at least gave me something to work with.

With mobile shots I typically stick to mobile tools for processing. The built in Google+ tools are pretty decent for most edits and processing, but I tend to use VSCO's excellent VSCO Cam for Android for the editing tools. I've tried using other dedicated camera apps, but with the Moto X's quick and easy flick motion to open the camera up I just tend to use that for convenience. While looking at this photo I thought I'd actually put it through Aperture and +Topaz Labs to see what we could get. I liked the radial lines in the clouds, but they were so full of color noise that I couldn't really get rid of them. So I converted the clouds to black & white, and masked them into the color photo. Because a JPEG photo doesn't allow for a whole lot of manipulation before pixel teasing becomes pixel destroying (and I'll be the first to admit, pixels were harmed in this photo) I added a heavy vignette to hide some of the damage.

The shot works for me because I was tired after a quick trip to Houston, and had read some conspiracy theory on why the airport was built, and what was under the airport. It was all very interesting to read while sitting half awake in the airport, but after spending 5 minutes researching it it sounds like good B movie material. I won't link to the conspiracy site that a friend gave me, but I'm sure a Google search will bring them up. 

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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor